Fund in place for quarry legal fight

Mike Garry
Editor, Coolum and North Shore News
I am the editor of the Coolum and North Shore News, a weekly community publication that covers the area from the Maroochy River to Marcus Beach. I have lived in the area for more than 35 years and, not surprisingly, am passionate about this community of communities. My hobbies are reading intelligent fiction, writing music and observing Australian politics.

Popular Stories

Local Real Estate

Cars For Sale

COOLUM hinterland residents are digging in to stop a 50-year hard rock quarry destroying their health, lifestyle, views and land values.

The residents, from Yandina Creek, Verrierdale, Valdora and beyond, have set up a fighting fund to raise $150,000 for legal fees as co-respondents to an appeal by Neil Mansell's Parklands Blue Metal against the council's decision in October 2011 to refuse its development application.

About $50,000 has been raised through fundraising functions and donations.

The Yandina Progress Association and the Sunshine Coast Environment Council are assisting the No Blasted Quarry fundraising effort but there is still $100,000 to go.

Valdora resident Jim Perry said he had emailed billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer to ask for a donation.

"In all his media stuff he keeps saying that he loves the Sunshine Coast so I sent him an email, 'how about kicking in for the fighting fund?'" Mr Perry said.

"They (the residents) are trying to raise money by small barbecues and this and that - it's going to be a hard slog so we might as well go to the people with money and try and get a bit of extra dough."

Mr Perry said a quarry would destroy the rural environment and make the narrow country roads unsafe.

He said most of the roads the quarry trucks would use to get out to Yandina-Coolum Rd were dirt roads that could not even take normal vehicles in both directions.

"There's going to be 112 truck movements a day, six days a week," he said.

"Then once they come on to Yandina-Coolum Rd, the main exit point is Toolborough Rd, which is right next to the Coolum Christian College.

"Council, when they rejected it, said that whole intersection would have to be upgraded. He (Mansell) is fighting it. There's no lights in a 100kmh zone and all these trucks coming out at the crest of a hill."

The hinterland community has been fighting Neil Mansell for more than 10 years over three different quarry sites in the area.

SCEC president Annie Nolan said the uncertainty had put a strain on the community.